A regional turboprop plane has crashed near Sao Paulo, Brazil, killing all 61 people on board.
Regional airline Voepass said the plane, bound for Sao Paulo International Airport, took off from Cascavel, Parana state, and crashed at 1:30 p.m. Friday in the town of Vinhedo, about 80 km northwest of Sao Paulo.
A video shared on social media shows the ATR-72 plane spinning out of control as it plunges behind a group of trees near homes, followed by a large plume of black smoke.
Daniel de Lima, a nearby resident, said he heard a loud noise before looking outside his building in Vinhedo when he saw the plane take a horizontal spiral.
“It was turning, but it wasn’t moving forward,” he told Reuters. “Soon after, it fell from the sky and exploded.”
Municipal authorities in Valinhos, near Vinhedo, said there were no survivors and only one house in the local condominium complex was damaged, while none of the residents were injured.
“I almost believe the pilot was trying to avoid a nearby neighborhood, which is densely populated,” de Lima said.
Authorities did not immediately say what caused the crash, but Sao Paulo state official Guilherme Derrite said the plane’s “black box” had been found and it seemed intact.
Video of the crash showed clear weather, with forecasts for the area calling for light precipitation and winds of 10 mph.
John Hansman, a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reviewed some images shared on social media and, without reviewing flight data, said the crash did not appear to have been caused by weather conditions.
“It may have been an engine failure on one side that was mishandled by the crew,” he said.
“It could be that it was the thrust of the remaining engine that triggered the downward rotation.”
John Cox, a US aviation safety consultant and former commercial pilot, said he would like to validate the Flightradar data, which showed many speed gyrations, but regardless, something “really important” happened. product that caused the plane to spin when it fell.
“We don’t rotate airliners,” Cox said.
“That means that at some point it stalled and the flight crew lost control of it. But it appears there was a catastrophic event before that loss of control.”
Voepass, Brazil’s fourth-largest airline by market share, said it could not provide any additional information about what caused the plane to crash. It initially reported 62 people on board the plane.
The Franco-Italian ATR, jointly owned by Airbus and Leonardo, is the main manufacturer of regional turboprop aircraft that can accommodate 40 to 70 people.
ATR told Reuters its specialists were “fully engaged” in the investigation into the accident and its customers.
This accident is the deadliest in Brazil since 2007, when 199 people were killed on a flight operated by TAM, which then joined LAN to become today LATAM Airlines.
